Having done the first and last of the schools project workshops, I had a lot of time in between to write up my experience and reflections. I felt a lot more confident for the young carers workshop for this reason. Once again the beginning of the workshop was extremely casual and relaxed. Although this lent itself to the overall atmosphere in which mistakes are welcomed and anything goes, I think some briefing might have been useful. On the one hand, I really like the streamlined, carefree, get stuck in straight away attitude which I thought was really conducive to the carers getting as much out of the workshop as they could. However, I realised midway through that I didn’t actually know what it meant that the children were young carers, and I had assumed someone was going to tell us this before we began.
Mel gave a brief introduction to woodcarving before the young carers took their places at the table which had been set up by the etching baths and began sketching and carving. Obviously the relief workshop is pretty tight for space and fitting everyone in the room is difficult, but this set up made it hard for us to get around and talk to the carers or offer advice. Consequently I don’t think the children at the far end of the table had much interaction with anyone but the helpers who had come with them. It was difficult sometimes to get the balance right between chatting to and encouraging the participants and potentially being overbearing or annoying.
Woodcuts are notoriously hard, but this also seemed to lend itself to the energy of the workshop. The carers quickly realised they were not going to be able to reproduce their initial drawings exactly and so quickly moved on to more experimental and abstract mark making. Not having the stultifying pressure of producing work for gcse briefs made a real difference, and the prints, although less in number, were much more interesting than those produced at PACA as a result.
Once again, over the period of the morning. The young carers seemed to start enjoying the chance to experiment and play with the material. Although I would have quite liked to have known more about the group before we started, it was a very short session, and their predicaments outside of the workshop was essentially irrelevant to us. The workshop was very short, lasting only the morning, and it felt like more preparation may have been wasted on such a short introduction to printmaking. I guess just expanding what people think about image making even in a small way is worth it.
The most important thing I have learned from doing the schools projects with Mel and Zoe is that the right attitude on the day is the most important thing, and that there’s usually nothing to worry about.
